A.M. Homes

Nobody probes the soft, dark underbelly of family life more expertly than A.M. Homes.

— Elle Magazine

To my generation of writers, Homes is a kind of hero.

The Mistress’s Daughter is the latest example of [Homes’s] fearlessness and brilliance. It is a compelling, devastating, and furiously good book written with an honesty that few of us would risk.

— Zadie Smith

[May We Be Forgiven is] heartfelt, and hilarious.

— O, The Oprah Magazine

At once tender and uproariously funny…one of the strangest, most miraculous journeys in recent fiction.

— The Cleveland Plain Dealer

I think this brave story of a lost man’s reconnection with the world could become a generational touchstone, like Catch-22, The Monkey Wrench Gang, or The Catcher in the Rye. . . . And hey, maybe it will save somebody’s life.

— Stephen King

A.M. Homes has long been one of our most important and original writers of fiction.

— Jay McInerney

She is a delight. What a mind! No wonder her books are so fabulous.

— Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA

A.M. Homes is that rare writer whose work successfully elides the distinction between high art and pop culture. In incendiary and brilliantly crafted fiction, Homes shocks and sometimes disgusts, but never fails to entertain as she tears down the façade of suburban normality to reveal the darkness within.

In her impressionistic art criticism, Homes has brought levity and creativity to a hidebound genre. Her inspiring lectures on creativity have spurred other writers and artists to abandon fear and mediocrity and take real risks in their work. Iconoclastic, daring, and fiercely real, A.M. Homes is one of the most provocative literary voices today.

From her first novel, Jack, written when she was 19, about a boy coming to terms with his father’s homosexuality, A.M. Homes has shown herself to be utterly fearless in tackling subjects that range from controversial to stomach-turning. The End of Alice elicited praise for its unflinching portrayal of an imprisoned pedophile.

“[Homes is] one of the bravest, most terrifying writers working today. She never plays it safe, and it begins to look as if she can do almost anything.”

—Michael Cunningham

Whether in the new-age luxury of contemporary Los Angeles in This Book Will Save Your Life, the white-picket fence uniformity of suburban New York in Music for Torching, or the overstuffed therapist’s chair in In A Country of Mothers, Homes’s novels offer an incisive look at who we are behind closed doors.

When it comes to this kind of scrutiny, Homes does not spare herself. Her memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter, was ten years in the making. It delves not just into her own experiences as an adopted child who meets her birth parents for the first time at the age of thirty, but also into the overwhelmingly complex issues of identity, genetics, and heritage that face every adoptee.

“[It is] as remarkable for its crystalline prose, flinty wit, and agile candor as for its arresting revelations… Homes masterfully distills angst and discovery into a riveting tale of nature and nurture that encompasses America’s great patchwork of immigrants and secrets.”

—Booklist

Always fascinated by the emotions that lurk below a manicured surface, Homes returns to the suburbs for her latest novel, May We Be Forgiven. It is an unnerving, funny tale of unexpected intimacies and of how one deeply fractured family might begin to put itself back together. The novel is the winner of the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction (previously the Orange Prize), one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world.

“I can’t remember when I last read a novel of such narrative intensity; an unflinching account of a catastrophic, violent, black-comic, transformative year in the history of one broken American family. A brilliant book.”

—Salman Rushdie

Homes is also the author of two collections of short stories, and has a new collection due out in 2018. Her writings appear frequently in ArtForum, Harper’s, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Elle,and Zoetrope. She is a Contributing Editor to Vanity Fair, Bomb, and Blind Spot. In addition, she has collaborated with artists such as Eric Fischl, Rachel Whiteread, Carroll Dunham, Catherine Opie, Bill Owens, Ghada Amer, and Ken Probst.

Homes wrote the screen adaptation of her novel, Jack, for Showtime, and has worked as a co-executive producer and writer with Stephen King and David Kelly on the new television show Mr. Mercedes, based on King’s thriller. She has also worked on Falling Water and The L Word. For the last few years, Homes has been developing television pilots for HBO, CBS, and ABC.

A.M. Homes’s work has been translated into twenty-two languages, and she has received awards and fellowships from numerous institutions, including the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. She has taught workshops in fiction, life writing, and creativity at Columbia University, NYU, and the New School. She currently teaches at Princeton. Born in Washington, DC, she lives in New York City.

Books

Praise for May We Be Forgiven

[May We Be Forgiven is] not just one of the best novels of the past few years, it’s also the most deeply, painfully American.

Fresh Air

Praise for The Mistress's Daughter

Like Bret Easton Ellis, A. M. Homes writes sleek, violent cartoons of contemporary existence, and [in The Mistress’s Daughter] it’s fascinating to watch this novelist of extremes handle the delicate material of her own life.

The New York Times Book Review

Praise for This Book Will Save Your Life

An absolute masterpiece . . . Homes writes ecstatically, and like no one else.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Praise for The End of Alice

The book shocks, mesmerizes, repels, and titillates, erupting at one unforgettable point in a harrowing flashback that does for baths what Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho did for showers.

Vanity Fair

Awards

2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize), May We Be Forgiven

1998 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship

1998 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship

Selected Writing

May We Be Forgiven (Viking/Penguin, 2012)

The Mistress’s Daughter (Viking/Penguin, 2007)

This Book Will Save Your Life (Viking/Penguin, 2006)

Things You Should Know: A Collection of Stories (HarperCollins, 2002)

Music for Torching (Morrow, 1999)

The End of Alice (Scribner, 1996)

In a Country of Mothers (Knopf, 1993)

The Safety of Objects (Norton, 1990)

Jack (Macmillan, 1989)

Books

Praise for May We Be Forgiven

[May We Be Forgiven is] not just one of the best novels of the past few years, it’s also the most deeply, painfully American.

Fresh Air

Praise for The Mistress's Daughter

Like Bret Easton Ellis, A. M. Homes writes sleek, violent cartoons of contemporary existence, and [in The Mistress’s Daughter] it’s fascinating to watch this novelist of extremes handle the delicate material of her own life.

The New York Times Book Review

Praise for This Book Will Save Your Life

An absolute masterpiece . . . Homes writes ecstatically, and like no one else.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Praise for The End of Alice

The book shocks, mesmerizes, repels, and titillates, erupting at one unforgettable point in a harrowing flashback that does for baths what Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho did for showers.

Vanity Fair

Video

A.M. Homes discusses May We Be Forgiven and her writing process with Granta magazine